t clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in
Gaelic. The whitish singlet and grey trousers held up by what is
obviously his soldier brother's spare regimental belt is pure
Lowestoft. The complete blue-serge-and-soot suit passing a wire down a
hatch is Glasgow as far as you can hear him, which is a fair distance,
because he wants something done to the other end of the wire, and the
flat-faced boy who should be attending to it hails from the remoter
Hebrides, and is looking at a girl on the dock-edge. The bow-legged
man in the ulster and green-worsted comforter is a warm Grimsby
skipper, worth several thousands. He and his crew, who are mostly his
own relations, keep themselves to themselves, and save their money.
The pirate with the red beard, barking over the rail at a friend with
gold earrings, comes from Skye. The friend is West Country. The
noticeably insignificant man with the soft and deprecating eye is
skipper and part-owner of the big slashing Iceland trawler on which he
droops like a flower. She is built to almost Western Ocean lines,
carries a little boat-deck aft with tremendous stanchions, has a nose
cocked high against ice and sweeping seas, and resembles a hawk-moth
at rest. The small, sniffing man is reported to be a "holy terror at
sea."

HUNTERS AND FISHERS

The child in the Pullman-car uniform just going ashore is a wireless
operator, aged nineteen. He is attached to a flagship at least 120
feet long, under an admiral aged twenty-five, who was, till the other
day, third mate of a North Atlantic tramp, but who now leads a
squadron of six trawlers to hunt submarines. The principle is simple
enough. Its application depends on circumstances and surroundings. One
class of German submarines meant for murder off the coasts may use a
winding and rabbit-like track between shoals where the choice of water
is limited. Their career is rarely long, but, while it lasts,
moderately exciting. Others, told off for deep-sea assassinations, are
attended to quite quietly and without any excitement at all. Others,
again, work the inside of the North Sea, making no distinction between
neutrals and Allied ships. These carry guns, and since their work
keeps them a good deal on the surface, the Trawler Fleet, as we know,
engages them there--the submarine firing, sinking, and rising again in
unexpected quarters; the trawler firing, dodging, and trying to ram.
The trawlers are strongly built, and can stand a gr